Conclusion

In concluding these remarks on the West Australian Aborigines, I would say a few words to English folk who flatter themselves that they belong to a higher order of created beings than the Western Australian Aborigines, who have been represented as mere baboons possessing an innate and incurable deficiency of intellect, rendering them incapable of instruction or civilization. Let them reflect that a similar opinion was one time held by the cultured Romans concerning the Aborigines of Great Britain. Cicero, in one of his epistles to Atticus, thus refers to our ancestors:--

"Do not," says he, "obtain your slaves from Britain, because they are so stupid and utterly incapable of being taught, that they are not fit to form a part of the household of Atticus."